Academic interests

Christoph Gradmann’s research mainly focuses on the history of infectious disease in modernity (19th ct to present). His point of departure was the cultural history and the history of science of late 19th ct German medical bacteriology. In this context he wrote a biography of the German physician Robert Koch (1843-1910). Recently he has broadened his focus and now investigates what had happened to infectious disease when they seemed to be returning at the end of the 20th century. Keywords are antibiotic resistance, nosocomial infections, emerging infections etc. Recently, he has started to work on the history of global health with special emphasis on the contemporary history of multi drug resistant tuberculosis.

Christoph Gradmann is interested in the history of the standardisation of biological medicines from about 1850. This research started with studies on the history of tuberculin and has been expanded in scope to address the question if a specific entanglement of technology and biology is specific for the history of modernity.

Christoph Gradmann has worked historiographic issues and in particular on the theory and history of biographies a s genre of historical text. He has published papers, has edited biographical dictionaries and written a book about biographies in interwar Germany.

Courses taught

Christoph Gradmann is programme leader of the master programme ”International Community Heath”.

Background

Christoph Gradmann has studied history and literary studies in Hannover (Germany) and Birmingham (UK). He took his M.A. in 1987 and a Dr.phil. in 1991. A postdoctoral examination, qualifying for professorial rank, the so-called Habilitation (in history of medicine and science), was taken in 2002.

Christoph Gradmann has held academic positions Hannover (1991-1992), Heidelberg, (1992-2006) and Berlin (1997). He has been a professor at UiO since 2006.

Christoph Gradmann has a broad network of collaborations, both nationally and internationally. Together with Christian Bonah (Strassbourg), Jean Paul Gaudelliere (Paris) and Volkers Hess (Berlin) he has initiated the ESF Research Network Program DRUGS, which, running from 2008 - 2013, has had members in nine European countries.

Gradmann, Christoph.
Robert Koch and the invention of the carrier state: tropical medicine, veterinary infections and epidemiology around 1900. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (2010) , pp.. 232-240.

This paper analyses how research on antibiotic resistance has been a driving force in the development of new antibiotics. Drug resistance, while being a problem for physicians and patients, offers attractive perspectives for those who research and develop new medicines. It imposes limits on the usability of older medicines and simultaneously modifies pathologies in a way that opens markets for new treatments. Studying resistance can thus be an important part of developing and marketing antibiotics. The chosen example is that of the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. Before World War Two, Bayer had pioneered the development of anti-infective chemotherapy, sulpha drugs in particular, but had missed the boat when it came to fungal antibiotics. Exacerbated by the effects of war, Bayer’s world market presence, which had been considerable prior to the war, had plummeted. In this critical situation, the company opted for a development strategy that tried to capitalise on the problems created by the use of first-generation antibiotics. Part and parcel of this strategy was monitoring what can be called the structural change of infectious disease. In practice, this meant to focus on pathologies resulting from resistance and hospital infections. In addition, Bayer also focused on lifestyle pathologies such as athlete’s foot. This paper will follow drug development and marketing at Bayer from 1945 to about 1980. In this period, Bayer managed to regain some of its previous standing in markets but could not escape from the overall crisis of anti-infective drug development from the 1970s on.

This article explores one of a citation classics in medical literature - Koch's postulates. It analyses their creation in the nineteenth century andtheir popularity in the twentieth century. As a genre of historiography, references to the postulates are anecdotes. In referring to a historical event that never happened, such references serve to remind their audiences of a tradition of experimental medicine that supposedly originated with Robert Koch.

This lecture is on the historical origins and the popularity of 'Koch's Postulates'. Rather than Robert Koch, it was his colleague Friedrich Löffler who in 1884 wrote down the well-known three steps of isolation, cultivation and inoculation as conditions for establishing a microbial aetiology of an infectious disease. These postulates are frequently invoked in textbooks of medicine and medical history. Yet, strict adherence to them is rarely to be found in medical research. Already their assumed inventor, Koch, produced numerous variations in his own methodology. Underlying his work was a sort of trivial ontology of infectious diseases which rendered an experimental study of human pathologies in animal models practical and meaningful. There were many ways to pursue this end and Koch usually limited his discussion to practical questions related to the course that investigations had to take, while principal matters were only treated implicitly in his writings. Löffler's achievement was to popularise Koch's views in his postulates. Given that, it is not surprising that references to Koch's postulates in the 20th century usually refer to the spirit rather than the literal meaning of the postulates. Also there are countless variations of those postulates. For example, proponents of virology or molecular medicine devised variations of Koch's postulates that serve to relate their own work to classical bacteriology. The latter is perceived as the origin of modern experimental medicine. The nature of such references is less historical than anecdotal: referring to a historical event that has never happened in a strict sense, these references produce ex traditione credentials for experimental medicine.

Gradmann, Christoph (2013). Bacteriology in British India: laboratory medicine and the tropics by Pratik Chakrabarti (review). Bulletin of The History of Medicine.
ISSN 0007-5140.
87(4), s 693- 695